Hi All,I was born and raised in Providence and still take every opportunity I can to spend time in the valley with family there, although I now live in Holladay.I've been practicing law for 15 years now and limit my practice to estate planning and related areas, but use that trust planning knowledge to provide the best NFA trust planning available. I can provide you with everything from the most basic gun trust that will simply allow you to purchase an Class 3 weapon or suppressor without obtaining the CLEO signature and providing fingerprints and photographs, all the way to the most advanced multi-state and multi-generational planning for your NFA firearms.The most popular option allows you to add and remove friends and family members as lifetime beneficiaries or special trustees of your trust, so that they can make use of the weapons without that use constituting a felony transfer. Check out my website at http://www.alder-robb.com/Page/gun_trusts. Please feel free to contact me at:jim@alder-robb.com801-463-2600

Sitting in a 2-day workshop specifically on gun trust formation and related firearms law. It's truly eye-opening how risky it is to try and use a LegalZoom, WillMaker or gun shop form as a substitute for proper NFA planning. This group of knowledgeable attorneys collaborates in creating the very best tools to protect you and your friends and family from the possibility of an accidental felony.Don't be fooled by the fact that the ATF approves a transfer involving a trust. This does not constitute approval of the trust, only the transfer. The inspectors are not attorneys and the ATF relies on individual state law for validity of the trust. Approval of a transfer does not guarantee that the trust will be invalidated at a later date because it is missing vital information (quite common, interestingly), directs the trustee to distribute NFA weapons to prohibited persons or to distribute in conflict with NFA requirements, etc.

I'm looking into a trust, and I'm still in what I would call the infant stage of researching. The author of the blog points out what I believe to be a valid point. The individuals saying not to use "legal zoom" are attorneys' offering to draft and expensive document. The above is charging $500 for standard/ popular trust. Now I'm not about to ignore the fact that the author of the blog is at the other end of the spectrum trying to sell suppressors. However I think its a reasonable argument given the information he provided. I would really like to hear of cases where the "State" did as the attorney warns, and invalidates the trust.

Lets just face the fact, this junk is expensive. Its hard to justify spending money on a gun with a threaded barrel ($300-$1000+) or have a barrel professionally threaded ($50-$150), then purchase a supressor ($200-$600) and pay for tax stamp or trust ($200-$600) all to make things quite when a .50 cent pair of ear plugs does the same thing. Of course these numbers are ballpark figures. Mr Alder offers a $90 basic trust that sounds like it has no flexibility. It all amounts to what feels like a infringement by financial means on 2nd amendment rights. And wile government started the nonsense with tax stamps, attorneys are not helping the situation when they want to charge $500 for a document that they can cut a past different names and print another one out.

So lets hear some more talk on this subject. I do not mean to offend attorneys, I just think we need to hear more.

The points raised about cost and regulations is absolutely valid. However, it is important to understand trust law and what a revocable living trust (such as is created by LegalZoom) is intended to accomplish. Such trusts are intended to benefit only you and your spouse. They typically do not allow others to enjoy the use of trust assets. More specifically, they even restrict the use of trust assets to the grantor! They are not designed to allow others to benefit from the items owned by the trust.The gun trusts I create are intended to provide you the flexibility to extend the use of trust assets to others. They are set up to give you as much flexibility as possible to accomplish this without having to come back to me for further work. A LegalZoom or Quicken Willmaker trust also will expressly instruct your successor trustees to actually violate the law in distributing trust assets after your death, subjecting both the trustee and the beneficiary receiving the asset to felony violations of the law. Transferring these weapons to your heirs requires the prior approval of the ATF through the Form 5 process and a properly constructed gun trust instructs the trustee on exactly what to do to accomplish this transfer without violating the law. You asked me at the gun show today how this might really get noticed by law enforcement. It might not, just like many people don't get in trouble for cheating on their taxes until they're audited. However, all it would take is for the beneficiary to get pulled over by law enforcement with the weapon in the vehicle and both your successor trustee (your spouse?) and the beneficiary are going to be facing felony charges.It is a mistake to assume that all attorneys are simply filling the blanks in on pre-made forms and selling this to a client at horrendously marked up prices. Absolutely, there are some attorneys that do basically that. In fact, I began my estate planning career with a lawyer that did exactly that. I later learned how bad this practice is, because the trusts being created have practically no chance of ever working (trust not funded, trust doesn't address client's particular circumstances, etc.). I now refuse to tolerate that type of planning in my current practice. I draft each trust for the individual client's needs and take all steps necessary to ensure it's going to work for the client. Obviously, there is always going to be some identical language in every trust that I create. I call this language "sweater language" because it's like the sweater you pack to take on a trip. If it gets cool, you have something to pull on to keep warm. If it stays hot, you never use it. Such language is there to guide the administration of the trust "just in case". Many people call this "boilerplate". The term boilerplate, although used today to refer to something in a derogatory manner, actually is intended to denote strength. It comes from the plate steel once used to construct boilers. Because boilers had the tendency to explode and cause serious damage, the plate steel had to be extra strong. Boilerplate language in a trust is there to make the trust strong and protect you against situations that may arise. Yes, I'm going to include this same language in every trust I prepare, because I want my clients to be protected as possible. Just because each trust contains much of the same language does not make it any less valuable to the individual client, but the attempts of LegalZoom, Quicken Willmaker, Suzi Orman and attorneys like I initially worked for, who attempt to turn "trust planning" into the selling of a commodity, unfortunately expose even the basic estate planning client to far too much risk that the trust will not work because the trust does not account for the individual client's specific situation.How much greater is the risk involved with NFA weapons? Basic estate planning doesn't involve 10-year felonies and $250,000 fines. If I'm going to play with this level of fire, I'm going to wear the best protective gear I can find. I'm not going to buy an unproven knock-off and hope it works. My billable rate as an attorney is $240/hour. I spend on average about 2.5 to 3 hours in putting together the $500 (Silver Edition) trust you mention. In addition to creating it, I scan all the documents for you, email them to you in PDF format so you can print your trust from your computer to supply to the dealer when you purchase your next NFA item, as well as being able to always print out more of the documents necessary to add and remove beneficiaries and trustees. This also allows you to store your documents on your smartphone or a thumb drive on your keychain, so you always have them accessible if confronted by law enforcement.The Bronze Edition trust ($97), while it doesn't include the functionality of the Silver Edition, allows anyone to get into a basic gun trust at very affordable levels. It can always be upgraded to the Silver Level (or Gold, if desired) for the difference in price without further involvement of the ATF. I can't even gather the necessary information from the client, assemble the documents, get it signed and executed, scanned and the PDF copies sent to a client in less than 45 minutes, so I actually lose money at my $240 hourly rate. I understand that all of this work can be expensive, but Congress makes the laws and I'm simply trying to protect my clients to the best of my ability and provide them as much flexibility as I possibly can under those laws. If a particular person wants to gamble on a LegalZoom trust (which I understand costs about $350) in order to save a few dollars, I can't blame them. I try to save money where I can. Having spent years learning about trust law and gun trusts, would I recommend it? Of course not.

Anyway this is quite interesting topic. thanks for posting this sir.. i was inspired with gun about year so i decided to collect more guns, from now i have a lot of guns in my house. so it was good i have pound this article and read about this and i was impress about your idea sir,, thanks you so much.

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